Posted
by
samzenpus
on Sunday July 15, 2012 @01:11PM
from the two-in-one dept.

Harperdog writes "Paul N. Edwards has a great paper about the links between nuclear weapons testing and climate science. From the abstract: 'Tracing radioactive carbon as it cycles through the atmosphere, the oceans, and the biosphere has been crucial to understanding anthropogenic climate change. The earliest global climate models relied on numerical methods very similar to those developed by nuclear weapons designers for solving the fluid dynamics equations needed to analyze shock waves produced in nuclear explosions. The climatic consequences of nuclear war also represent a major historical intersection between climate science and nuclear affairs. Without the work done by nuclear weapons designers and testers, scientists would know much less than they now do about the atmosphere. In particular, this research has contributed enormously to knowledge about both carbon dioxide, which raises Earth's temperature, and aerosols, which lower it.'"

I wonder about the climate impact of the series of multi-megaton surface blasts by the US and USSR in the 1950's and 1960's. These tests put both dust and radionuclides into the atmosphere in large, possibly globally-significant quantities. When we see surface temperature changes over the last 50 years, how much of that is a recovery from an abnormal climate?

On the scale of the whole Earth, I don't think the tests would have much effect. There were "only" a couple thousand nuclear tests spread over decades, most of which were underground rather than atmospheric. At the peak there were ~100 a year. The effect on climate was likely much less than from other processes, such as agriculture, volcanic eruptions, or smoke from forest fires. The radionuclides would have little or no effect on climate. They just make good tracers.

In addition to that, you have to add in the radioactive releases of nuclear plants associated with bomb production, like the radioactive iodine releases from the Hanford nuclear reservation. Maybe not "bombs", but they were certainly related to bomb production, and they were not just environmental releases but DAMAGING environmental releases.

Or, all together were probably less than Tambora: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora [wikipedia.org] -- at 800 Mt, considerably less. Tambora holds many records: Largest explosion in recorded history, loudest sound in recorded history, largest single-event influence on the climate in recorded history (it basically eliminated "summer" for two years in a row in at least some temperate latitudes) and helped make the decade of 1810 the coldest decade on historical record (but not the coldest year or part of the coldest half-century or century).

But I don't think we can be certain of the effect of the nuclear tests. Many of the largest were low over water and kicked a lot of water into the stratosphere. We just don't have the data, and hence any conclusions are likely to be guesses.

i see far too much herp derp from "both" sides of the fence. people's political affiliation seems to have defined their sense of morals as well. it's a really fucked way to think. human ethics are not a line between left and right. it's a bit more dimensional than that.

Not only the nuclear winter. At around the same time, astronomers started* to study the climate of the other planets of the Solar System, palenontologues started* to study the ancient climate changes that happened on Earth, and the people thinking about nuclear warfare started* to study man-made climate change.

* Yeah, I know, there were older studies. But not with as strong conclusions.

got people started actually thinking about greenhouse gasses and climate

That started a little over a century ago, however for the first 50yrs the killer argument was that the H2O absorption spectrum overlapped that of CO2. This was not resolved until the 50's when better spectoraphs were built for reasearch into heat seeking missiles. The role of CO2 as the main driver of Earth's climate came about from trying to work out what caused the ice ages, even though the discovery of the Milankovich cycles eventually explained the timing of the ice ages, it could not explain the maginitude of the change without including CO2 feedbacks (such as melting permafrost).

All this was known to science in the late 50's when the NAS first warned the US government that emmisions were causing the climate to warm. Areosols are much more complex, some (sulphur compounds) have a cooling effect because they reflect sunlight, others such a soot absorb sunlight and dump it into the ocean as heat. This complexity is reflected in the error bars put around it's contribution to climate change. This complexity and uncertainty is also the origin of the canard "they predicted global cooling in the 70'", it's true that ~30% of the papers that did attempt a climate prediction in the 70's, predicted the wrong sign. However that was 40yrs ago and there is no scientifically valid support for such a view now, particularly since Reagan pushed for and won a (successful) international cap and trade system on sulphur emmissions to combat acid rain.

Equally they also killed off a number of trees too, but not enough that greenery can't handle it to a the extent it has.

Much of the CO2 processing occurs in the oceans by plankton. Trees definitely help, but plankton does more. Of course plankton is dying too and it's much more difficult to remedy than planting more trees.

I, myself, don't know how much climate scientists really know about the climate. Few people probably do, in much the same way that most people don't know anything about my field. However, based on my cursory understanding of general systems, the difficulty in climate science is that it's a chaotic system. The rules are well known, and the observations can be well modeled, but making predictions about the future of a chaotic system [wikipedia.org] is inherently difficult.

I, myself, don't know how much climate scientists really know about the climate. Few people probably do, in much the same way that most people don't know anything about my field.

But do you know anything about your field? What would you think if someone said "I'm not sure the experts in smaddox's field really know anything about their field"? Saying, "experts aren't experts" can become very negative very quickly, and today there is an organized, committed effort to devalue all expertise. Once you do that, you can tell people anything at all because "I know as much as the so-called experts".

The rules are well known, and the observations can be well modeled, but making predictions about the future of a chaotic system is inherently difficult.

Yes, but chaotic systems are seldom made less so by adding greater instability. So may predictions about limits can not be accurate, but the prediction that "greater instability will make the chaotic system more unstable" is pretty straightforward. So while climate scientists can't predict the exact amount that temperature will change as greenhouse gas emissions increase, they can predict that continuing to increaase greenhouse gas emissions at the rate they have been increasing is not a good idea.

I, myself, believe that the expertise represented by the group of people known as "climate scientists" probably rates some consideration of their findings.

Two comments -- just to be picky. One: Read Taleb's "The Black Swan". It is basically a systematic proof that in fact most experts aren't experts, with narrow exceptions in non-complex scientific fields such as physics. In complex systems, experts in fact are rarely experts, and almost invariably claim more knowledge than time and data prove that they have/had. It's quite understandable -- in the end you can understand why many experts aren't expert.

Two, chaotic systems are often made less so by increasing a driver. In fact, many of them have narrow parametric regions where they are chaotic, and if you move any parameter out of that region the system stabilizes.

As a single example, the most violent weather tends to occur when warm fronts and cold fronts are in close proximity, when/where high pressure systems and low pressure systems collide or interact. For any given heat input, temperature differentials on the surface of the Earth actually increase cooling efficiency because outgoing power is radiated proportional to the fourth power of the temperature but only the second power of the relevant surface length scale. The more uniform the temperature, the warmer the average temperature. It is therefore entirely possible for a warming climate to have more uniform temperatures and less violent weather. It is similarly quite possible for a globally cooling climate to be setting local temperature records (concentration of heat in a comparatively small area, from which it is relatively rapidly lost) while only cooling very slightly elsewhere, and to have more violent weather when cold fronts impinge on those heated areas.

I have code and descriptions if you want to numerically study a very simple actual chaotic system (or two, or three) so that you can see for yourself that you have to drive it at just the right frequencies, amplitudes, and dampings to observe a Feigenbaum tree (period doubling into chaos) and equally rapid emergence from the chaotic regime as you increase amplitude or frequency or damping. That doesn't make this a universal truth about chaotic systems, BTW, it just points out the danger of making sweeping statements about something you don't really know much about. One could go on -- is there a proof that adding more CO_2 creates greater instability? What, exactly, is greater instability (how do you define it)? I fully agree that adding more CO_2 (e.g. taking it to 600-700 ppm by 2100) is likely to raise global temperatures by some amount (the exact amount is a matter of considerable debate even among experts with a lower bound that is just over nothing).

It is by no means clear -- and to the best of my knowledge there is no statistically sound evidence to support the conclusion that -- the warming of the late twentieth century resulted in "greater instability" in the form of more violent weather, nor has any other kind of "instability" other than the motion of the mean global temperature itself been convincingly demonstrated. It has been drier, wetter, stormier, hotter, colder, both locally and globally, in the past without CO_2 forcing.

The really interesting thing is that many climate scientists are quite open about their lack of certain knowledge in climate science -- in a scientific forum where they might be called on it if they utter something really speculative as if they are sure. A George Mason survey of actual climate scientists found that roughly one in seven think that there will be little to no warming and no catastrophe by 2100. Over half think that there will be significant, but probably not catastrophic warming. In the end, I agree with you -- this honest lack of consensus among climate scientists probably rates some consideration.

For one thing, it makes the entire field more credible. When was the last time you were in a room full of scientists who agreed about everything, even important things for which there is far better experimental data and far more computable theory

In a sane world, we would build better instrumentation and wait and see, while taking modest measures that are likely to have an actual impact on global CO_2 levels

Modest measures that the energy industry would spend billions to block.

Cap and trade seemed like a very reasonable modest measure. It didn't require anyone to give up their cars or stop the use of coal. It just place a very modest and market-driven cost on the emission of greenhouse gas. Even the Kyoto Accord was fairly modest, and at least

Here's the thing I don't get, "conservatives" have been leading the anti-science movement against these measures for 20yrs, yet their "hero" Ronald Reagan (prompted and supported by Thatcher who graduated as a Chemist from Oxford) enthusiastically campagined for a solution to acid rain, he was successful and his international cap and trade system on sulphur emmissions has been up and running for over 20yrs now.

Taleb is an idiot whose success can be boiled down to watching which way the market is going, then doing the opposite. No black swans or other ominous-coloured fowl required. He has no particular insights to share on any other topics, as far as I'm aware.

One thing that is in my own opinion nearly certain -- we may or may not be on a track to catastrophic warming, but I very strongly doubt that we're on a fast track or an irreversible track.

It certainly is not irreversible in geological time, but given the slow relaxation of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, it is likely to persist for a period of time that is long in the scale of human lifetimes. Of course, there is the potential for intentional climate engineering (as opposed to the climate-engineering-by-ne

Actually, the rules aren't even well-known. The majority of CO2 warming models rely on a concept of "back radiation" that (according to physicists) [slayingtheskydragon.com] does not even exist.

I encourage you to read Spencer's explanation of "back radiation" (linked to from that page) before reading LaTour's rebuttal. Most CO2 models require this nonexistent "back radiation" for their calculations to work.

The majority of CO2 warming models rely on a concept of "back radiation" that (according to "physicists") does not even exist...

You know these pseudo-scientific refutations of climate science are getting, well a bit lame, to be honest. Why don't you try something more exciting, like proving that thermo-nuclear weapons break the rules of thermodynamics and therefore can't even exist. C'mon you can do it!

"What was an ad hom? I'm passing no judgement on what Latour has written here, I just won't bother reading stuff (whatever position it is arguing) published on so ridiculous a forum."

Except that you did. You called it "obvious" pseudo-science and refused to read it... and that is precisely what ad hominem is all about. Or one of the things it is about, anyway.

"It's a skill that comes with experience."

It's BS that comes with stubbornness. Look, let me put it in plain words: you have every right to decide, based on the nature of the source, whether you want to listen to, or read, that source. Granted.

But having refused to look at the evidence, you have no pretense of having falsified it.

"I was asking you, by reference to similar pseudo-science, to prove that thermonuclear weapons do not exist. Are you up to it or not?"

Let me put this another way, since there is someone else here who seems to need to have things explained to him 5 or 6 different ways before it finally sinks in, so a couple of times is (relatively) a relief:

You have every right to consider the source and refuse to look at the evidence it is presenting.

However, once you have done that, you have voluntarily waived any credibility you may have had, when you try to argue against it.

But that's exactly what you did: you called it obvious "pseudo-science

Don't presume to tell me what an ad hominem is. You seem confused about our respective roles here. To establish an ad hominem you would have to show that I dismissed the validity of an argument (or truth of a fact) based on a personal attribute of the "speaker." But we don't even get that far. Your source fails on the grounds of admissibility. I've made no claim of invalidity because there is no argument to address in the first place. That is not an a

"To establish an ad hominem you would have to show that I dismissed the validity of an argument (or truth of a fact) based on a personal attribute of the "speaker.""

You are invalidly assuming what is meant by "the speaker". In essence, you are questioning the source based on where it happened to appear or who it happened to be hosted by, not the message itself or even the actual author.

You can pick nits until the sun gets cool, but this is still the essence of ad hominem.

"OK para-science or non-science then."

HAHAHAHAHA.

"If your term paper cites this source, as an authoritative source of the science (as opposed to say evidence on the pervasiveness of para-science), I will mark you down and I will in comments attempt to explain the appropriateness of your source"

BUT, dumbass (just my opinion), you DIDN'T EVEN EXAMINE THE ACTUAL SOURCE. You only examined the site it was posted on.

I'm sorry but you just don't. You look at a site which is practically surrounded by signs flashing 'disinformation' and you have not an inkling as to why a serious visitor would be dubious about its contents. You need to exercise way more skepticism in assessing the credibility of your sources of information.

... this is still the essence of ad hominem.

Now pay attention and try to understand it this time! What I wrote was that "I've made no clai

"You look at a site which is practically surrounded by signs flashing 'disinformation' and you have not an inkling as to why a serious visitor would be dubious about its contents. You need to exercise way more skepticism in assessing the credibility of your sources of information."

On the contrary, I do. You see, I didn't just look at the fluff and ASSUME, as you did. I took the trouble to look up Professor Latour and his reputation which, unlike the site on which it happened to reside, might actually have some bearing on the CONTENT, which is the important thing. YOU didn't even get that far.

"What I wrote was that "I've made no claim of invalidity" and since an ad hominem argument is in essence a claim of invalidity there can be no ad hom. Yes?"

First, you DID make a claim of invalidity (more on that in a moment). Second, that isn't what you wrote. You wrote this:

To establish an ad hominem you would have to show that I dismissed the validity of an argument (or truth of a fact) based on a personal attribute of the "speaker."

That is what the "hominem" part means, technically... but it is commonly us

I've just been participating in a rather extended round of debate with Olsen (sky dragon slayer). Two comments again:

a) CO_2 warming models don't "rely" on back radiation. They are inferable from simple subtraction, using utterly empirical evidence. Find a website that shows top of atmosphere spectrographs, ideally ones taken at night over e.g. the arctic so that you can eliminate the confusion of reflected sunlight and focus only on radiation given off by the ground as it cools. Look at the hole in

Your logic may be 100% accurate, but it says nothing about the majority of CO2 models. Please, if you wish to actually refute my statement, show me some generally accepted models that do not make use of the back-radiation concept.

Please note that I did not say CO2 wasn't a cause of warming, I simply claimed that many models are flawed.

"IMO fairly professional opinion as a physicist, Olsen is not competent;"

That's fine, since I didn't reference Olsen at all. Did you even visit the link and view both sides of the discussion to which I *WAS* referring?

Please note that I did not say CO2 wasn't a cause of warming, I simply claimed that many models are flawed.

Difficult to refute, phrased that way. I'm sure that they are. But not necessarily through the use of back-radiation in the model, although frankly I don't care for it either simply because it is so open to pointless argument.

That's fine, since I didn't reference Olsen at all. Did you even visit the link and view both sides of the discussion to which I *WAS* referring?

"But not necessarily through the use of back-radiation in the model, although frankly I don't care for it either simply because it is so open to pointless argument. "

That is a non-response and deserves no answer.

"Sky Dragon is Olsen"

NO... I specifically linked to an article by Pierre LaTour. The fact that it happens to be posted on the Sky Dragon site is incidental, and the article does not rely upon or even mention Olsen. Any argument of that sort is nothing but ad hominem. Surely you know what that is.

"Nobody sane actually argues that the GHE is a cold system "warming" a warmer system, nor is that what climate models implement."

On the contrary, as Spencer points out in his article (to which LaTour's article is a rebuttal, and which I did recommend you red first):

"This back radiation is a critical component of the theoretical explanation for the Greenhouse Effect. "

Correction: formatting error due to Slashdot's Neanderthal character-handling:
"... because the energy of the "back radiation" is then less than T."

Therefore the "back radiation" (which we know to be of a different nature and magnitude than "backscatter") cannot be absorbed by the ground, to cause surface temperature increase. It is physically impossible.

"Charming. As I said in my responses, I'll address your Sky Dragon misinformation when I get the time, but first I need to address some of your other misinformation to put it in context. Patience."

Again, you sidestep my question. Why can't you answer it?

And your further ad hominem, in regard to that article happening to be on a particular website, just makes you look that much more foolish. It is an article about physics. Would you like to refute the actual content?

The fact is that I suspect you will not actually address this. Unlike other things you post on your blog (which appear to be in a glaringy, self-servingly edited form). Because I don't think you really CAN refute LaTour's physics. In

And by the way: I am NOT a "climate change contrarian". I simply dispute the validity of certain CO2 warming models. I have stated this MANY TIMES over the last couple of years. But it has seemed to keep going over your head.

That's the definition of a climate change contrarian: someone who disagrees with the overwhelming scientific consensus that most of the warming since 1950 is very likely due to human emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2.

You've previously [slashdot.org] said: "Dictionaries do not accurately define words, they merely list popular usage. If you want technical accuracy, consult an encyclopedia, not a dictionary. "

That's why I'm referring to technical statements like these:

In 2005, 11 national science academies signed a joint statement [nationalacademies.org] saying "It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities... The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking promp

What does that have to do with my comment above? What you are saying, in effect, is that anybody who questions CO2 models is a "climate change contrarian", when even in POPULAR usage, "climate change" does not equal "CO2".

Dictionary or not, you can't just go around expecting English to mean anything you want, in any give month.

"It's interesting that less than two hours after you noted [dumbscientist.com] that I had the integrity to link to the originals, you made a screenshot without a link to the originals and claimed it was "in exactly the same spirit" and "no more out of context than anything he has stated.""

What a completely ridiculous assertion. As you admit yourself, just prior to that WE HAD BEEN DISCUSSING THE CONTEXT in that very same thread, on the very same page. Anybody who saw that was EXTREMELY likely to have read prior parts of the discussion, in which the context was clearly spelled out. If they didn't, then they don't have a claim of "out of context" anyway.

That is far, far different from pulling something out of another thread, on another page, out of context. If you think they are the same th

And yet another brief reply to another ridiculous portion of Khayman80's post:

... it is generally considered to be "fair use" to record something that is happening in public and not being charged for. There is a gray area, to be sure, but I think political speeches rightfully belong on the "fair use" side of the line. [Jane Q. Public, 2011-08-29] [slashdot.org]

... There is no justice involved in trying to hold a copyright on a speech that was given in PUBLIC, and broadcast to the public, almost 5 decades ago.... I think we have to draw the line and say that public political speech, that wasn't done as a "performance" for profit, is public domain. [Jane Q. Public, 2011-08-29,30]

First, as I have pointed out earlier, I never "threatened" (your word) to sue you anyway. I did the opposite: I specifically stated that I was NOT going to sue you.

But second -- and this is most laughable of all -- YOU link to information about "libel", but you obviously don't understand the first things about it yourself. You demonstrate as much by somehow equating fair use of recordings of public figures with online libel. T

Another example of cherry-picking what you reproduce here, in order to make yourself look good. You just can’t seem to resist.

After you cited an E&E paper to support the claim that sunspot cycle length is responsible for recent warming, I said:...

You accused me of not citing my sources, and asked me to provide a peer-reviewed paper supporting my statement, implying that none existed. I did so, per your request. In fact it took me only a very short tim

"This high-schooler somehow thinks he/she can protect him/her self from libel and copyright by stating on the blog that âoesomeoneâ said something, while still partially quoting said âoesomeoneâ. And then even including a link to the original exchange. Haha. If I were this person, and possessed some intelligence, I would shut this site down. Sadly, it is looking more like he/she is going to end up in Litigation Land."

... stated my honest opinion at the time: your arguments were below the quality of a decent high-school debate, and that if you keep presenting things on your blog in the manner in which you have, then you are likely to get sued (the reference to "litigation land").

But as I also clearly stated: *I* was not threatening to do so. I told you in very clear English, where everybody could see it, that under current circumst

And just in case you fail to understand the comments I just made above, as you have so thoroughly failed to comprehend so many of my other comments, I will sum it up for you here in fewer, simpler words:

The fact that I opined that you were screwing up and were likely to get sued, DOES NOT equal a "threat" to sue you myself!!!

Climate is not mathematically chaotic, exept on geologic time scales. Climate is the statistics of (mathematically chaotic) weather patterns, without man-made forcings it is remarkably stable on human time scales.

Here's another quote from Dyson; "my objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.".

In other words his argument is not based on facts, it's based on the way he percieves the behaviour of climate scientists ( coincidently that perception matches the propoganda put out by "for hire" anti-science lobbyists, not heretics). Don't get me wrong, I admire Dyson, however wrt climate science, he is the one clinging to dogma in a field of study "about which [he does] not know much".

So the contribution of nuclear weapons research to atmospheric understanding is the justification for billions (trillions?) of dollars spent on nuclear weapons stockpiles and the entire Cold War fiasco? Let's trot out nuclear medicine as the next justification or, gasp, nuclear power. Humanity has been on the brink of extinction through nuclear war for fifty years. If those benificent aliens are going to save us they had better hurry...

So the contribution of nuclear weapons research to atmospheric understanding is the justification for billions (trillions?) of dollars spent on nuclear weapons stockpiles and the entire Cold War fiasco? Let's trot out nuclear medicine as the next justification or, gasp, nuclear power. Humanity has been on the brink of extinction through nuclear war for fifty years. If those benificent aliens are going to save us they had better hurry...

I don't think anyone said it 'justified' it. Think of the old adage of making lemonade when life hands you lemons and maybe you'll actually get the point.

The article hardly talks about climate research at Los Alamos National Laboratory [lanl.gov], which develops the ocean (POP [lanl.gov]) and ice (CICE [lanl.gov] and CISM [lanl.gov]) components of one of the world's leading climate models, CESM [ucar.edu]. The climate group at Los Alamos got started studying nuclear winter (related work was mentioned in TFA), and built its strength in ocean modeling with new ideas in high performance computing for parallel partial differential equation solvers (fishing for new applications, since they had all these giant superc